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Talk:Smoking Muppets
rumor park Talk:Lefty_the_Salesman#Something_I_apparently_just_noticed_today... —Scott (talk) 23:05, February 23, 2010 (UTC) Resource I'm doing some digging myself, in conjunction with a Jack Benny project I'm working on, but I wanted to let everyone know that Tobaccodocuments.org is a great resource for this topic. It's allied with the "tobaco control" site Smokefree.net but it's essentially collection of all manner of documents (legal, advertising, scripts, articles) they obtained under a legislative requirement that the tobacco companies make this material public on their websites (which they did but made hard to find or access and so on). Anyway, it's full text searchable, and while it takes time to dig through and sift through what's relevant, it's very useful. It also actually corroborates the Truth.com ad, outside of the specific approach of the PSA and treating the Muppet Movie as child targeted, which many other legislators, critics, and news articles did from the late 1980s, when the info first came to light, onward. With that in mind, I think the whole leader will need to be rewritten (addressing, in as NPOV a way as possible a subject which has already involved a lot of subjective assumptions by others), maybe covering the topic chronologically (including RJ Reynolds' sponsorship, albeit through their food division, of the US airing of Hey Cinderella, which is why Kermit and Sesame Street were accused of selling out) and trying to look at both the real world situation regarding the Muppets and the in-character occurrences (although that may work better in an essay elsewhere, on Toughpigs say or if there's ever a Kermit Culture). Anyway, regardless of how we want to approach it, there's a lot of info there, ripe for plucking and sourcing. -- Andrew Leal (talk) 23:53, December 1, 2009 (UTC) :Nice! I still have some stuff from the old old truth.com site to dig up, but it pales in comparison. —Scott (talk) 23:55, December 1, 2009 (UTC) ::Yeah. The best part obviously being that you can sift through actual documents, a mix of news articles (some slanted) and actual released lists and company reports and promotion, so that's always the best evidence. Part of the issue as far as Muppet Movie and like examples is concerned, from what I'm reading so far, seems to be that Morris (indirectly mostly, through their ad agencies) may possibly have paid for the placement, whether in cash or supplying the "product" as a gift (that they definitely supplied the product used in the movie, and in some other film cases signs or advertising as props or set dressing, free of charge is fully proven), with articles saying that payments generally go to the director (in which case it would have been James Frawley). So far (and I've barely started in on the documents and will probably put them aside to work on other stuff) that aspect seems too murky to actually try to tackle or prove one way or another in the Wiki article (barring something simple like a flat out statement or voucher), but it seemed worth sharing here. Most of the original news articles focus on that element, though some instead (or in addition) look at the movies they were in, not as "children's" so much but that this was happening in G and PG films which inherently, however marketed, would have had "family audiences" as a significant consumer segment (I'm starting to sound like an ad man myself now). -- Andrew Leal (talk) 23:58, December 1, 2009 (UTC) Why Sandbox? I'm just wondering why this is still in the Sandbox? There's a little too much bolding of names going on for my taste, and the intro paragraph might have a little too much POV, but this seems like a really interesting list / rumor page. I just don't know if it got abandoned or if there was a reason it wasn't pushed "live" yet. -- Peter (talk) 04:26, 11 April 2009 (UTC) :I think we just forgot about it. I know I meant to add some more notes about the Truth.com ad, and had wanted to make this look like a real article, but I never got around to it. I'll go through that folder again today. —Scott (talk) 22:22, 12 April 2009 (UTC) Lord Chatterly What about Lord Chatterly from Alphabet Chats? He smoked a pipe. -- User:MsSwanFan 20:34, May 29, 2007 :Ooh, good one! —Scott (talk) 01:35, 30 May 2007 (UTC) More Smoking Muppets I found a couple more mentions of Muppets that smoke: Statler: He smoked an exploding cigar in the Juliet Prowse episode (after the Cowboy Sketch). The same could be said for Fozzie in the Phyllis George episode. Earl Sinclair smokes cigars often. The most recent example I saw was in the "Network Genius" episode. If you want to add another note, his lighter looks to be made of rock, like one that would be seen on "The Flintstones". Some of Earl's cigars are taken from glass tube holders. The earlier sketches of the Sinclair family show Earl with a cigar. http://muppet.wikia.com/wiki/Image:Dino_Sketch.JPG And, to just toss this in, Charlene literally smoked from the collar in anger in the "Working Girl" episode. I believe that B.P. Richfield also smokes cigars, but I'll have to find the episode. -- user:MsSwanFan 00:04, August 25, 2007